Journey through the 2018 Touch Drawing Gathering through the images below.
Click on the images to enlarge and see in correct proportion.
After a relaxed afternoon of arrivals and settling in, we do a silent land walk and gather in our opening circle. We then have our first Touch Drawing session – an open, fluid one. We each drift off to sleep as we are ready.
Each day revolves around our core practice – deep immersion in soulful expression through Touch Drawing.
We balance private reflection on our drawings with times of witnessing with partners.
Each year one of the most moving Touch Drawing sessions is when we create ‘Inner Portraits’ one another. After processing with our parter, we gather in the Sanctuary to share the amazing stories of receiving images of significance for one another.
After a very full couple of days, we are ready for spacious, unscheduled time in nature. We enter silence Tuesday evening. The next morning, some choose to stay on the land, while others are ready for the expansiveness of the beach. Later in the afternoon, we gather in silence in the sanctuary – time for reflection, writing and moving to integrate our images.
We are ready to lighten up and have fun mounting and coloring our drawings.
We expand our awareness to a more universal, planetary focus as we walk the labyrinth and draw in the center.
We each selected a drawing from the labyrinth, or another, that we feel expresses a more transpersonal quality.
On the day we created Inner Portraits, three participants chose instead to focus on drawing ‘the collective’. They then developed the images during our coloring sessions. After the labyrinth walk, we gathered in the sanctuary to witness their collective drawings, as well as the transpersonal drawings everyone created in the labyrinth.
On our final evening, I take a portrait of each participant in their fullness and beauty. And of course we get everyone together for our group photos!
We transform our studio into a ceremonial space and spend our final evening drumming, dancing and singing. It is a sacred time for integration and energizing new possibilities. After our closing session the following day, many help with clean up and gather on my front porch for dinner. It is time to savor the magic of our time together. We were even blessed with Susan’s Sabbath candles and wine.
What a beautiful labor of love you have made, putting our awesome experience into images and so lovingly arranging them all. It is a treat to see the faces of everyone again, to remember the quality of light and the amazing place we all got to inhabit for awhile. May the grace of these images and our experience inhabit us for a long time to come. Thank you!